Primary night live Gonzales takes leads in House primary; Campos back on top; Carmack-Altwies winning big
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Jun. 4—8:47 p.m.: In the presidential race, President Joe Biden is pulling 85% of the 90,000-odd Democratic votes that have been tallied, with 9% for uncommitted and 6% for Marianne Williamson. Former president Donald Trump has 83% of the almost 59,000 Republican votes that have been tallied, with 9% for Nikki Haley, 4% for uncommitted, 3% for Chris Christie and 1% for Vivek Ramaswamay.
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8:37 p.m.: With 15,614 votes counted so far, incumbent First Judicial District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies is keeping her big lead over challenger Marco Serna, with 64% to his 36%.
The vote counts are slowly creeping up in other local races. Anita Gonzales' lead has fallen to 55% compared to 45% for Rep. Ambrose Castellano. So far 3,229 votes have been tallied in that district; there were 4,044 votes cast there in the 2022 Democratic primary for that seat and 5,591 in 2020, so if the pattern holds more than half of the vote in that district might be in already.
No changes in the other local races. Linda Trujillo is still winning big in the Senate District 24 primary with 63% of the vote. As far as county office, incumbent Clerk Katharine Clark has 72% of the 11,856 votes, and Lisa Cacari-Stone and Adam Johnson are winning with 61% and 70%, respectively, in their races for the County Commission District 2 and 4 seats.
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8:15 p.m.: And we have our first significant lead change of the night — Sen. Pete Campos is back ahead, with 1,281 votes compared to 1,037 for challenger G. Michael Lopez.
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8:06 p.m.: As far as other interesting legislative primaries statewide, Cindy Nava is slightly ahead of Heather Balas in the race for the Democratic nomination for Senate District 9, winning 1,683 to 1,471. On the Republican side in the same district, 2022 Secretary of State candidate Audrey Trujillo is beating Frida Susana Vasquez, 717 votes to 659.
Sandoval County Commissioner Jay Block is winning big in the Republican primary in Senate District 12. In Senate District 13, Democrats Bill O'Neill and Debbie O'Malley are in a dead heat, with O'Neill winning by four votes out of 2,602 tallied so far.
And in Senate District 15, Heather Berghmans is beating Sen. Daniel Ivey-Soto, D-Albuquerque, in an 80-20 blowout, with 1,842 votes to his 451.
Sen. Greg Nibert, R-Roswell, seems to be on track to keep his seat. Now-Rep. Candy Spence Ezzell, R-Roswell, is on track to jump up to the Senate albeit in a tighter race — she's beating Chad Hamill 863 to 707 at the moment.
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8 p.m.: A thousand-odd new votes were added to the tally for First Judicial District Attorney, cutting Carmack-Altwies' lead very slightly. She is now up 65-35, with 12,260 votes counted.
As of 5 p.m., 25,376 Democrats had voted in the three counties in the district, according to the Secretary of State's office; if we assume a few thousand people voted in the last two hours and the total's about 30,000, that means those 12,260 votes represent more than 40% of the total. Needless to say, Marco Serna has a lot of catching up to do to win.
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7:51 p.m.: While no new votes have been posted in any of the local Santa Fe races since my last update, some interesting patterns are developing in some of the state legislative primaries.
In House District 70 in San Miguel County, progressive challenger Anita Gonzales has taken a big lead over conservative Democratic incumbent Rep. Ambrose Castellano, with 904 votes to his 563. And with 1,394 votes counted, challenger G. Michael Lopez is beating incumbent Sen. Pete Campos, D-Las Vegas, with 58% of the vote.
Similar patterns are developing in a few other races where more conservative Democrats are facing progressive challengers. In House District 69, Michelle Abeyta is winning 67% of the vote against incumbent Rep. Harry Garcia, D-Grants, although just 127 votes have been tallied so far. Challenger Jon Hill is taking 60% of the vote against incumbent Rep. Willie Madrid, D-Chaparral. And Angel Charley is beating the more conservative Clemente Sanchez 59-26 in Senate District 30.
Sen. George Muñoz, D-Gallup, is so far bucking the pattern with a 3-1 lead over his challenger. So is Rep. Marian Matthews, D-Albuquerque, who is winning 991-708 against challenger Greg Seeley.
With more votes counted, Kenneth Brennen and Rep. Susan Herrera are starting to solidify their leads in their HD 50 Republican and HD 41 Democratic primaries.
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7:25 p.m.: So far, President Joe Biden is winning the Democratic presidential primary with 89% of the 16,803 votes that have been counted, with 7% for uncommitted and 4% for Marianne Williamson.
Former president Donal Trump is winning the Republican primary with 85% of the 10,502 votes counted, with 8% for Nikki Haley, 3% each for Chris Christie and uncommitted and 1% for Vivek Ramaswamay.
With 72 votes counted, Lars Mapstead is winning 58% of the vote in the Libertarian primary with 42% for uncommitted.
I must stress these numbers are very preliminary, representing about 7% of the total statewide vote.
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7:18 p.m.: Some preliminary numbers are starting to come in.
With 10,812 votes counted so far in the First Judicial District Attorney's race, Mary Carmack-Altwies is winning with 68% of the vote. As far as county-level races, incumbent County Clerk Katharine Clark was winning with 73% of 10,868 votes. Lisa Cacari-Stone is winning big in the District 2 County Commission race, with 61% of 1,762 votes, and Adam Johnson is winning big in District 4 with 70% of 2,778 votes.
As far as local state legislative races, Linda Trujillo is winning big in Senate District 24, with 63% of the 2,923 votes. Anna Hansen had 25% and Veronica Krupnick had 12%. In House District 41, incumbent Rep. Susan Herrera, D-Embudo, is beating challenger Margaret Cecilia Campos, although so far just 58 votes have been tallied and Herrera is winning 33-24. In House District 50, Kenneth Donald Brennen is beating Wendy Ann Lossing 338-235 in the battle for the Republican nomination to take on state Rep. Matthew McQueen, D-Galisteo.
I need to stress these numbers are very preliminary — more than 23,000 people had voted in Santa Fe County as of 5 p.m., more than 4,500 in Rio Arriba and more than 2,500 in Los Alamos.
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7 p.m.: The polls have closed. And now we wait.
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6:20 p.m.: As of 5 p.m. Tuesday, 205,549 people had voted in New Mexico. Of them, 85,583 had voted at the polls on Tuesday and the rest were either absentee or early in-person voters. About 59% of votes statewide have been cast by Democrats, 41% by Republicans.
The highest percentages of Republican votes, unsurprisingly, have been in red counties, mostly in Eastern New Mexico, such as Chaves, Curry, Eddy, Lea, Lincoln, Otero, Quay, Roosevelt, San Juan, Torrance and Union, where there are competitive Republican races for positions such as state Legislature and local offices. Republicans tend to prefer in-person voting — out of the 83,248 Republican votes cast statewide as of 5 p.m., 46% were at the polls, 43% were early in-person votes and just 11% were absentee.
With no Republicans even on the ballot for many county-level and legislative races, voting in Northern New Mexico has skewed heavily Democratic. In Santa Fe and Rio Arriba counties, 86% of the votes cast so far have been on the Democratic line; in San Miguel and Taos counties, it's 88%.
In Los Alamos County, a formerly red county that has become safely blue since 2008, 64% of the 2,543 votes as of 5 p.m. were Democratic, 34% Republican. This is going to lead to an odd situation for the House District 43 race — there are no Republicans running against incumbent Democratic Rep. Christine Chandler but two Libertarians vying in a primary for the chance to challenge her, and as of 5 p.m. just 24 Libertarians had voted in the entire county.
Democrats have been more likely to vote absentee than Republicans — out of the 121,615 Democratic votes cast statewide as of 5 p.m., 42% have been early in-person votes, 39% at the polls on Tuesday and 19% absentee.
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6:15 p.m.: Here is some of our recent political coverage to get you caught up. Debates, candidate questionnaires, campaign finance, stories on some of the controversies of the various races — we've got it all!
The DA's race:
Campaign finance:
Senate District 24:
County commissioner:
And county clerk:
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6:05 p.m.: Good evening! Welcome to The New Mexican's primary night live blog. Here we will be posting election-related news as the results come in. The polls close in about an hour.
Locally, the race that has drawn the most attention is for First Judicial District Attorney, where incumbent Democrat Mary Carmack-Altwies is facing a challenge from Marco Serna, her predecessor in the job as top prosecutor for Santa Fe, Rio Arriba and Los Alamos counties. Both have well-funded campaigns — they're each among the top 10 in fundraising and spending in the state, ahead of some of the Legislature's biggest fundraisers, with the only race drawing more money being the race for Albuquerque-area Second Judicial District Attorney. The campaign has featured a level of advertising and spending on both sides that's unusual in a local race in Northern New Mexico, as the candidates have traded barbs on DWI prosecutions, conviction statistics, Carmack-Altwies' handling of the obelisk and Rust prosecutions and other matters.
There are also competitive Democratic primaries for two open Santa Fe County Commission seats, and for Santa Fe County Clerk, where incumbent Katharine Clark is facing a challenge from former clerk Geraldine Salazar. With no Republicans running for any of the county-level seats in Santa Fe, the primary winners are all but guaranteed to win the November election.
As far as the many state legislative primaries throughout the state, we will be looking at who wins the Senate District 24 race in Santa Fe, where longtime Sen. Nancy Rodriguez's retirement is leaving an open seat. Linda Trujillo seems to have the most institutional support judging from her fundraising, while Veronica Krupnick is being backed by the local chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, who have been having a successful run in recent city elections. County Commissioner Anna Hansen is also looking to move up to the Senate.
We will also be looking at the various progressive vs. moderate Democratic primary battles throughout the state and what the outcomes say about the direction of the party and what they will mean for what sort of legislation is possible in the 2025 session. There are about a half-dozen races where a more conservative Democrat who voted against paid family and medical leave is facing a challenge from the left — including in San Miguel County's House District 70, where incumbent Rep. Ambrose Castellano is facing Anita Gonzales, who has challenged him the past two elections and lost narrowly both times.
We will also be keeping an eye on the presidential primary results. While President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump are expected to win their respective races overwhelmingly, it will still be worth watching the numbers. Biden has had well-publicized struggles with low approval ratings and poor polling, and there is an organized movement by New Mexicans unhappy with his Gaza policy encouraging people to vote uncommitted. Meanwhile, today's presidential primaries in New Mexico and several other states are the first for Trump since his 34 felony convictions in New York last week.
